Quoting from Apache Kafka's wiki page

> According to a Quora post from 2014, Kreps chose to name the software after the author Franz Kafka because it is "a system optimized for writing", and he liked Kafka's work Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Kafka

For those who were confused as the parent was, this is about the ownership of Franz Kafka, the writer's, original writings.

"LinkedIn's" Kafka is open sourced under Apache and has been for a long time.

Yeah, I wondered if there was some new controversy I wasn't aware of...